Systems and methods are known that employ a full-reference approach, a no-reference approach, and a reduced-reference approach to video quality measurement. For example, systems that employ a full-reference approach to video quality measurement typically receive target video content (also referred to herein as a/the “target video”) whose perceptual quality is to be measured, and compare information from the target video to corresponding information from a reference version (also referred to herein as a/the “reference video”) of the target video to provide a measurement of the perceptual quality of the target video. In such systems that employ a full-reference approach to video quality measurement, it is generally assumed that the systems have full access to all of the information from the reference video for comparison to the target video information. However, transmitting all of the information from the reference video over a network for comparison to the target video information at an endpoint device, such as a mobile phone, can consume an undesirably excessive amount of network bandwidth. Such a full-reference approach to video quality measurement is therefore generally considered to be impractical for use in measuring the perceptual quality of a target video at such an endpoint device.
In systems that employ a no-reference approach to video quality measurement, it is generally assumed that no information from any reference video is available to the systems for comparison to the target video information. Such systems that employ a no-reference approach to video quality measurement therefore typically provide measurements of the perceptual quality of the target video using only information from the target video. However, such systems that employ a no-reference approach to video quality measurement may be inaccurate, since certain assumptions made for the purpose of measuring the perceptual quality of the target video may be inaccurate.
Systems that employ a reduced-reference approach to video quality measurement typically have access to a reduced amount of information from the reference video for comparison to the target video information. For example, such information from the reference video can include a limited number of characteristics of the reference video, such as its spectral components, its variation of energy level, and/or its energy distribution in the frequency domain, each of which may be sensitive to degradation during processing and/or transmission of the target video. However, such known systems that employ a reduced-reference approach to video quality measurement can also be impractical for use in measuring the perceptual quality of a target video following its transmission over a network to an endpoint device, such as a mobile phone, due at least in part to constraints in the network bandwidth, and/or because of the limited processing power that is typically available in the endpoint device to perform the video quality measurement.
It would therefore be desirable to have improved systems and methods of objective video quality measurement that avoid at least some of the drawbacks of the various known video quality measurement systems and methods described above.